The fall of Heath

Following an FOI request from the Margaret Thatcher Foundation,
the National Archives has just released a crucial document on the fall of
Edward Heath: Robert Armstrong's note of events 1-4 March 1974, which had
been removed from the file opened in January 2005.

1974 March 1-4: Heath's attempt to form a
coalition with the Liberals

Following the General Election of February 1974, Prime Minister Edward
Heath found himself deprived of his Parliamentary majority. The Conservatives
won the largest share of the vote, but a handful of seats fewer than Labour.
(Parliament was "hung": no party held a majority.) A file (PREM 15/2069)
tells the story of his attempt to remain in power by forming a coalition
with the Liberal Party, led by Jeremy Thorpe.

It was the first time since the 1930s that a peacetime coalition government
had been seriously discussed. Officials carefully recorded the outcome,
although a key document - Robert Armstrong's 'chronicle' of the whole episode
- had strayed from the file released in January 2005. Following a Freedom
of Information request from the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, the missing
item was found in one of Harold Wilson's files (PREM 16/231) and
is now being released
for the first time.

Robert Armstrong was Heath's closest official adviser - the head of his
Private Office - and a man in considerable sympathy with the outgoing Prime
Minister. He was also the government's chief contact with Buckingham Palace,
keeping the Queen in touch with the coalition talks (through her Private
Secretary, Sir Martin Charteris) and exploring the role she might be called
upon to play. Understandably these were stressful times for Armstrong. At
one point he admits struggling to hold back tears.

The Armstrong memorandum confirms the consensus at the time that there
was little to no prospect of success for the Coalition talks. The Liberals
demanded that the Conservatives commit themselves to electoral reform as
the price of an arrangement. The most the Conservatives would offer was
an inquiry into the matter, with a remit to report quickly. Although lesser
differences between the parties might have been finessed (whether Heath
should stay as Prime Minister, whether the Liberals would enter the Government
or support it from outside), electoral reform was a very large obstacle.

And even if a Conservative-Liberal agreement had been reached, the combined
strength of the two parties was too small to give them an effective majority.
Other minor parties would have had to be involved in some fashion.

Although the negotiations failed, it could be argued that they had some
political value for the Conservatives. Heath probably hoped that talking
to Jeremy Thorpe would help him win back Liberal voters - many of whom had
defected from the Conservatives - by showing that Liberal leaders bore final
responsibility for the replacement of a Conservative Government by a Labour
one. This display of sweet reasonableness was the first step Heath took
towards the notion of a "Government of National Unity", the centrepiece
of his campaign during the October 1974 election.